


the art of mapmaking

by wingsofbadass



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Morning After, Non-Sexual Intimacy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-06
Updated: 2019-06-06
Packaged: 2020-04-11 19:52:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19116577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wingsofbadass/pseuds/wingsofbadass
Summary: He couldn’t remember the last time he’d woken up next to someone —  not just close because of the cramped space they shared in the protective magical dome, butrightnext to someone. With warm breath on his skin, with his nose buried in flower-scented hair, with a sheen of sweat along his side where a soft body pressed against his.





	the art of mapmaking

**Author's Note:**

> We were talking about Fjord possibly having scars on his back in the Fjorester server and I fucking vomited fluff everywhere.

Fjord couldn’t help the way his body jerked in surprise when he awoke. In response, Jester made a grumbly noise and scrunched up her face, her nose crinkling adorably. For a moment, Fjord didn’t dare breathe, as though moving might startle this moment into flight, never to be seen again.

There was no way to tell the time here in the perpetual darkness of Rosohna, but it certainly felt like morning to him. He felt rested, peaceful.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d woken up next to someone —  not just close because of the cramped space they shared in the protective magical dome, but _right next_ to someone. With warm breath on his skin, with his nose buried in flower-scented hair, with a sheen of sweat along his side where a soft body pressed against his.

When Jester gave no further indication of waking, he exhaled slowly.

Her features had relaxed back into the expressionlessness of sleep, lips pouty and brow smooth. Pale freckles were sprinkled onto the bridge of her nose like powdered sugar. A strand of hair stuck to her lower lip, trembling faintly with every breath.

She was so flawless his chest ached.

As his heart rate slowed back down to a healthy pace, Fjord thought back to the evening before. The openness of Jester’s expression was something he wouldn’t forget anytime soon, the way her sincerity had pierced right into his heart and left him helpless to bear it any longer. Embracing her, holding her had sent him soaring. And then they’d been so close - Jester’s gaze falling to his lips and Fjord falling into the kiss.

He could still taste her happiness on his tongue, the laughter bubbling out of her and making his skin tingle.

Jester was all up in his space. So effortlessly did she fit into the crook under his arm that he couldn’t stop marveling at it as though he’d never held anyone close before. And maybe he hadn’t - not like this. There had been surprise, for sure, in the first moment of waking, but there was no tugging in his gut, no desire to shy away, no fear of the fluttering of his pulse. Where she was pressed against him, he felt her chest expand with every breath. As Fjord watched her breathe, he had to curl his traitorous fingers into a fist to keep them from reaching out for the curve of her cheek, the tip of her nose.

It was a strange thing to settle into, this intimacy he’d never seen coming, but he liked how it felt. Against his own agonized expectations, there was an ease to touching Jester and being touched by her. Having never been a touchy-feely kind of person, Fjord had been surprised to find himself unable to stop chasing after the contact once he’d started. A hasty kiss pressed to her cheek had been the beginning of it and the end of him. Heat sometimes flared between them, last night more than ever at his first taste of her tongue, but he was relieved to see Jester was in no hurry to rush into anything.

She sighed in her sleep, and he wondered if she was dreaming anything nice.

He kept catching himself staring at her lips, kept having to talk himself out of kissing her breathless.

It was only when the pressure in his bladder became too uncomfortable to ignore, that he faced having to move. He brushed a kiss to Jester’s shoulder, right where the strap of her nightgown had slipped down, inviting, and then slowly rolled out from under her. Predictably, she grumbled and scrunched her eyes closed tighter as though stubbornly fighting consciousness. Fjord could feel the old scar on his lip stretch from the smile. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he raised his arms and stretched his muscles that were stiff from lying in the same position all night.

Considering he was a rather fussy sleeper, it was a miracle he’d woken up just the way he’d fallen asleep. A couple of satisfying pops told him his spine was grateful for the movement. He rolled his neck slowly from side to side the way Beau had shown him before getting up and putting on a shirt to sneak to the washroom.

When he returned, Jester was still in bed, only somewhat covered by the messy sheets and with one leg hoisted up to where he’d been lying. Still seeking his warmth. The thought made him want to float.

This was a first. Crawling back into bed with someone like this was not something he’d done before. In the hush of darkness it could almost have felt like sneaking around, like doing something forbidden and secret, but if there had ever been something in his life that was just —  light and unblemished and _right_ , then it was this. Jester made a pleased, drawn-out noise that he felt in his gut when he gently picked up her leg and hooked it back over his hip.

Fjord watched her eyes flutter open and immediately focus on him.

“Hey,” he whispered. Where his hand still rested on the back of her thigh, he let his thumb stroke over her skin.

“Good morning,” Jester replied brightly, a smile curling her lips. Her palm slid over his chest, a comforting warmth right over his heart. “What’s with the shirt, Fjord? I was enjoying the muscle show.”

An embarrassed laugh spluttered out of him that only seemed to amuse Jester. All these months and she still managed to catch him off guard with that wonderful frankness of hers. He was getting better at handling it, though.

Fighting down his abashment, he pushed up his short sleeve and flexed his bicep as obnoxiously as he could.

“Oh, yeah?” he challenged, “Did you miss these bad boys right here?”

Oh, how he loved it when he could make Jester giggle like that. She reached up to assess his upper arm with her fingers, making faux-serious noises of appreciation. “Yes, these are quite nice, but I was talking about your back, actually.”

Fjord looked at her, surprised. “My back?”

One of her eyebrows wiggled up and down suggestively. “I miiight have watched you stretch.”

“Oh.”

Fjord was aware he was looking at her and that she was expecting him to flirt back, but the words would not come. His back was —  he’d never given it any thought. He wasn’t even sure what it looked like these days, having mostly avoided it. It wasn’t as though many people saw him shirtless. Even being with Avantika or Sabien hadn’t exactly meant he trusted them enough to let them out of his line of sight.

“Fjord?”

Jester looked worried now, scared that she’d done something wrong.

He had to look down for a moment, to clear his throat. “Uh, sorry, I just zoned out for a minute.”

A tender hand came up to cup his jaw, but there was no pressure in the touch, no attempt to redirect his gaze.

“What’s wrong?” she asked softly, the tone of her voice so earnest and full of affection it made it hard to breathe.

Still without looking at her, Fjord took her hand in his own and pressed a kiss into her palm.

“Nothing’s wrong, I promise. You just surprised me.”

“When why do you look sad?”

Now he did look at her face. “Do I really?”

Jester nodded. “Kinda.”

Struggling to make sense of his own emotions, Fjord wondered how he could make her understand what was happening. It was a flaw of his, he was beginning to understand, how close he kept everything to the chest. Now when he did want to share, he lacked the words. He didn’t know how.

“Doesn’t - Aren’t there scars all over my back?” he asked after a few moments of quiet between them. He was playing with her fingers, enjoying how much smaller they looked interwoven with his. “I can feel them sometimes, when I move.”

“There are some, yeah,” Jester confirmed matter-of-factly. “But I couldn’t see them well in the dark and I wasn’t really paying attention to them, I guess.”

Fjord couldn’t help but smile a little at that. “Distracted by the muscle show?”

“Exactly.”

It already felt incredibly natural too seek out her lips. His nose nudged hers and then their mouths met softly. The sigh that escaped him sounded like relief even to his own ears, and Jester cradled his face once more as she kept kissing him —  slow, soothing kisses that he melted into so gratefully.

He leaned his forehead against hers when they broke apart, staying close. The warmth of Jester’s breath tickled his lips.

“How come you don’t know about your scars?” Jester asked, expression a little careful. She was never pushy with him, and he appreciated that, but the simple fact that she cared enough to ask was worth more than he could ever tell her.

“I try not to look at them,” he admitted. “They’re from when the Tide’s Breath exploded.”

Understanding crept into Jester’s eyes, and she nodded. It was so easy. He only needed to say a little and she understood him perfectly, he could tell. She knew how painful and complicated the memories were for him; the paradox of missing his old life and hating it, the longing for Vandren and the confused resentment at the thought of him.

“Should I look for you?” Jester offered, and he blinked at her in confusion.

“What do you mean?”

“Maybe it’s not as bad as you think. I’ll take a look and tell you what to expect. I’ll be your scout.”

The idea made him nervous, but it was hard to refuse Jester anything when she looked at him like that. Her big eyes were so full of genuine support and sometimes her seemingly strange suggestions turned out to be actually helpful. Fjord swallowed and then sat up to take off his shirt. He felt himself blush a little when Jester whooped playfully at the sight of his exposed skin and hurried to lie down on his stomach so he could turn his heated face away from her.

“Hhhmm, let’s see,” Jester breathed, her voice low and intimate. She had propped up her head in her hand as she lay on her side next to him and now let her other hand slip up along his spine, from his lower back to his neck. The touch made him shudder, but unexpectedly Jester didn’t comment on it.

Fjord closed his eyes.

“Here’s one,” she said, still in that low, conspiratorial tone. He felt her fingertip trace a line along his right shoulder blade —  once, then twice — showing him exactly where it was. He was tensing up despite himself and he hoped it wasn’t too obvious. When he felt her lips press to the spot, Fjord’s heart jumped.

She continued like this, pointing out different scars, mapping them out delicately on his back with her artistic fingers and then kissing each and every one of them like a seal of approval. Slowly, Fjord felt himself relaxing into her touch. He remained silent, not trusting his voice to come out steady, not with this lump forming in his throat with every scar lovingly outlined and every mark of grief kissed. Sometimes Jester described their shapes, as though she were pointing out cutely-shaped clouds in the sky.

“And that’s it,” she concluded after a while, whispering the words right against the distorted skin she’d just kissed, her lips dragging over it a little.

It took Fjord a moment to realize the sinking feeling in his stomach was disappointment. He lay there with his muscles slack, his limbs heavy, hoping for more of her touch, and indeed, she kept roaming the expanse of his back with her hand.

“They’re not that many, you know, and I think they make you look pretty cool.”

“Cool?” he mumbled, sounding slurred and sleepy.

“Yeah, like a real adventurer!” Jester’s voice rose in excitement. “You’d expect someone called Captain Tusktooth to have some awesome scars and you have those on your face and they’re like a little preview and then the big reveal is on your back, like, _woah,_ this guy is _really_ cool.”

A burst of laughter shook Fjord’s whole body. He turned to face Jester again and saw her smile melt into a soft expression as she met his gaze.

“You’re also really cool, Jester.”

In the darkness of his room it was hard to tell, but he thought maybe this time she might’ve been blushing a little. She recovered quickly, though, sitting up and making a throwaway hand motion.

“I know that, of course.”

Fjord didn’t know how to deal with all this happiness.

He grabbed for her hand and pulled her back down to him, making her squeal his name in delight and protest. Rolling on top of her, he could feel the muscles in her stomach contract with her giggles.

“Of course,” he echoed with a grin.

Jester reached for his jaw once more, this time pressing the pad of her thumb to the tip of his tusk that must’ve slipped out from under his lip, a certain cheekiness dancing in her eyes. Resisting the urge to cover it back up, Fjord ducked down and pressed his mouth to hers instead, kissing her with all the ardor dancing in his veins. She made a happy noise against his lips and tilted her head to deepen the kiss. Her arms wound around his waist and he felt her palms settle on his shoulder blades once more, only they were not seeking out anything —  just holding him close.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d woken up next to someone, but he could tell he would remember this one for a long while.

**Author's Note:**

> I had a really hard time not calling this fic "Baby got his back" I honestly deserve a medal for this extreme show of restraint.


End file.
